Stumbled upon this piece of ‘art’ by artist Damien Hirst. It’s a dead shark in a formaldehyde tank. In 2004, this was sold for an undisclosed amount to Steven Cohen(estimates peg the figure northward of $10 million.)
I’m reminded of Woody Allen’s remark from Annie Hall.
“A relationship, I think, is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.”
तो समझने की बात ये है Woody बाबू, कि not only can a dead shark be priceless, it can also be astonishingly well preserved.
Here’s to dead sharks.

​You’ve heard of mixed metaphors(if you haven’t, look them up immediately; don’t hold your horses till the cows come home).
Well on similar lines, here are some mixed दोहाs:
पोथी पढ़ी पढ़ी जग मुआ, पंडित भया ना कोय।
माली सींचे सौ घड़ा, ॠतु आए फल होय।।
(Economies tend to be driven by demand cycles, not by the opinions of experts)
माटी कहे कुम्हार से, तू क्या रोंदे मोय।
रहिमन फाटे दूध को, मथे न माखन होय।।
(When you’re in a hole, stop digging.)
निंदक नियरे राखिए, ऑंगन कुटी छवाय।
बिना जीव की हाय से, लोह भस्म हो जाय।।
(Criticism is useful. But not for the faint-hearted)
Enough politics. Moving on.....
ऐसी वाणी बोलिए, मन का आपा खोय |
दो पाटन के बीच में, साबुत बचा ना कोए ||
(Beware. Sweet-talk kills)
बढत-बढत संपत्ति-सलिल, मन-सरोज बढि जाय।
बोया पेड़ बबूल का, आम कहाँ से खाय।
(As wealth increases, the mind may grow too. But the fruit it yields is in accordance with the means used for wealth acquisition.)
Okay, this time, really moving on.....
बरस्या बादल प्रेम का, भींजि गया अब अंग।
चन्दन विष व्यापे नहीं, लिपटे रहत भुजंग।।

​Poetry. Deemed as worthless by utilitarians; and exalted, by romantics, as the very essence of all that which makes us human. Dylan Thomas says that the world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it.
Then, as a tribute to poetry this Poetry day, it may be worthwhile to compare the prose and poetic expressions of the same idea. Quite deliberately, the chosen ‘idea’ is one that pertains to the debate at hand. Also, I pick a gent no less than the great Tagore for the prose section (lest the accusation of inadequate representation gain hold). The poetry is by Allama Iqbal.
Prose:
‘A mind all logic is like a knife all blade, it makes the hand bleed that uses it.’
Poetry:
‘अच्छा है दिल के साथ रहे पासबान-ए-अक़्ल,
लेकिन कभी कभी इसे तन्हा भी छोड़ दे।’
QED, shall we say?
(पासबान-ए-अक़्ल: अक़्ल का पहरेदार)

​
“The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?” said Pablo Casals. Sumptuous words, especially in times when the winds will have you believe that ‘nationalism’ is a four letter word. But Mr Casals fails to acknowledge a basic fact; love for one’s country is not always a matter of voluntary choice.
I invoke Iqbal to help the point across:
ग़ुरबत में हों अगर हम
रहता है दिल वतन में
समझो वहीं हमें भी
है दिल जहाँ हमारा
सारे जहाँ से अच्छा
हिन्दोस्तान हमारा
Though ग़ुरबत also means poverty, the connotation here pertains to the tribulation of a person away from his native land.
Now ग़ुरबत doesn’t always need a strong impetus (like a racial slur) for it to be set into motion. It may as easily be activated by subtle tethers such as rootedness or belonging. For example, mere perception of the way you are perceived (by the natives of your adopted land) can set ग़ुरबत going.
And then there are ग़ुरबत’s main instigators: Habit and conditioning. You may be gleefully cruising through the English countryside of green meadows and bright blue skies when, all of a sudden, ग़ुरबत will come calling in the guise of a ridiculous yearning; the yearning for a roadside dhaba that specialises in stuffed parathas( served with an unhygienic achar) and thickly concocted chai.
The point, then, isn’t whether Hindostan is indeed ‘सारे जहाँ से अच्छा.’ The point is that Hindostan ‘हमारा’ है। So by corollary, Hindostan के हम हैं। And that is a fact which cannot be wished away.

​Sadhguru makes a tweet about Shivratri not being a religious festival. He calls it an astronomical phase of the planet that facilitates a natural upsurge of energy.
Whereas Sadhguru may be absolutely right with his explanation, this practice of decoding religious rituals in terms of ‘science’ is not something I personally subscribe to.
Science, after all, is a mere repository of structured knowledge. It’s by no means a complete repository. And then there’s also the question of capacity. बोले तो, not only is there such software which hasn’t yet reached our repository, there’s also the kind which simply won’t run on the hardware we’ve been endowed with.
In short, ‘science’ has its limitations. I hence don’t consider it adequate enough to be used as a touchstone for sanctifying age old practices. If you have the faith, stick to your rituals. If you don’t, stop turning to Heisenberg and Shrodinger for validation.

​The critically acclaimed ‘Disobedience’ premiered on cable last evening. ‘You are free to choose,’ boom two important characters; one at the very beginning and the other at the very end.
Incidentally, it’s Gita Jayanti today. I’m drawn to a shloka from the concluding chapter (chapter 18, text 63). Says Krishna to Arjuna:
इति ते ज्ञानमाख्यातं गुह्याद्गुह्यतरं मया |
विमृश्यैतदशेषेण यथेच्छसि तथा कुरु ||
Thus I have explained to you the most confidential of all knowledge. Deliberate on this fully, and then, do what you wish to do.
यथेच्छसि तथा कुरु!
Krishna endorses free will but also lays down the stipulations under which it may be exercised, namely, right knowledge and deliberation.
Then, where either of the prerequisites is lacking, it may be prudent to stick to convention, or to the law of the land; for ‘Disobedience’ of either can have far reaching ramification. We saw so in the layered and complex movie. And we’ll see so in the panning out of nationwide events from the past few weeks.

​The Times of India editorial page carries as many as three write-ups that are critical of the Ayodhya verdict.
Opines Omair Ahmad, “The whole judgement validated the idea that violence based on faith can offer you a legitimate locus standi on property you want to claim.”
Ahmad’s grievance with violence is restricted to one party alone. He forgets the wee bit of violence that was wreaked some 450 years ago when Big B & gang went marauding over the Gangetic plains and undertook their little architectural venture in Ayodhya.
Next comes Shobha De. She intends to denigrate the very process of jurisdiction when she wonders aloud “What if there would have been a woman on that Constitution Bench which delivered the historic Ayodhya verdict?” Madam of course doesn’t enumerate the specific qualities which a lady judge brings to the table (or bench) and a male judge doesn’t. Erudition in law, integrity, objectivity; these are the basic qualities we expect in a judge. And I like to think that none of them are sex specific.
And finally, we have Aakar Patel. Mr Patel is “..unable to figure out the logic and the jurisprudence that links the findings of the court and its conclusions.” He has a point. But what he fails to acknowledge is that the case wasn’t one that could’ve been strictly circumscribed within unequivocal tenets of constitutional law. ANY ‘conclusion’ that the judges would have arrived at would have been similarly dislocated from the ‘findings.’
And yet, despite all the nitpicking, no critic mentions the most relevant bit of legal juggling that was perpetrated. Shifting away from the High Court’s stance, the apex court declared the disputed area to be one single chunk. Thereupon, whatever transpired in one part could be taken to have transpired in the whole of it.
Anyway, all that is behind us now. In philosophy and other subjective realms, it is rare that complex problems get solved to the satisfaction of all. They are usually ‘dissolved’ and left at that. What ultimately matters now is that a cantankerous thorn has been dislodged from the flesh of Indian polity. It’s time all of us moved on.

​Chatting up a guy who works at an old-age home(वृद्ध आश्रम) resulted in the revelation of these seemingly counter-intuitive facts:
1. Parents abandoned by their kids don’t usually do a ‘Baghbaan’ on them. They keep missing them to the very end and can even be found saving their meagre pensions for them.
2. Even though the residents are doomed to spend the rest of their lives with each other(and that they’re each other’s only emotional support), they seldom develop a harmonious relationship amongst themselves. Squabbles abound.
3. The free boarding & lodging doesn’t automatically result in people queuing up at these philanthropic institutions. Beggars who make 300-400 rupees a day can rarely be persuaded to enrol.
I guess the above observations lay bare two well recognised tenets. One: Schopenhauer’s ‘intellect’ will always be that lame and emaciated person which the strong but blind ‘emotion’ carries on his broad shoulders. And two: Once the stomach is full, most people will prize liberty over a lot many things.
Most governments are well aware of that first tenet. They sometimes tend to overlook the second.

​Okay, so here’s Ghalib-speak for ‘नानक दुखिया सब संसार’:
नक्श फरियादी है किसकी शोखी-ए-तहरीर का,
काग़ज़ी है पैराहन हर पैकर-ए-तस्वीर का।
First, the glossary;
नक़्श:copy/print, फ़रियादी: complainant, शोख़ी: playfulness/mischievousness, तहरीर: writing,
काग़ज़ी: paperlike, पैराहन: dress, पैकर: appearance
And then, some background.
Ancient Persia had this custom that if you needed to make a complaint to the Shah, you went to him dressed in a paper robe.
So what Ghalib is saying is that we’re all perpetual appellants against the quirks of a playful destiny-writer; and that the picture appears to be one wherein everyone’s wearing a paper robe(the robe of a complainant).
All very well I say, and yet, two particular words stick out. नक़्श and किसकी. नक़्श of course is a reference to all of us - copies in the image of the destiny writer. And because we’re in his own image, किसकी becomes more cryptic. It could be interpreted to mean ‘किसी की नहीं’, as in ‘किसकी हिम्मत है जो....?‘
The couplet, then, could well be a statement of Ghalib’s defiance. There’s humble acceptance of the power of destiny, but there’s also the pride that won’t allow one to stand in complaint.
I guess that’s the beauty of good poetry. We’re all allowed our own little interpretations.

,​'दो बातें हो सकती हैं सनम तेरे इंकार की,’ says Saif Ali Khan to Raveena Tandon, before he himself answers the riddle.
‘या दुनिया से तू डरती है,
या क़दर नहीं मेरे प्यार की’
Hell no! और भी बातें हो सकती हैं, the most likely of them being this: The lady is not at all scared of the world; she has the intellectual and emotional wherewithal to fully appreciate your emotions for her; and yet, she chooses not to reciprocate because she simply doesn’t find you worth her while.
Now this, dear friends, was a classic case of false binaries; situations where - you’re made to believe - there exist just two possible stances. We allow such stuff in movies because there are disgruntled lovers to be catered. Otherwise, caveat emptor. Be careful before buying into such arguments.